Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 21:28:52 +0200
Houthis in Sanaa
Yemen's disintegration may lead to a sectarian war that could resemble the
conflicts in Syria and Iraq, writes Medhat Al-Zahed
Friday,17 October, 2014
Yemen faces an uncertain future after armed Houthis swept into the capital.
Despite the signing of a power-sharing agreement with the president and a
security protocol, the Iranian-backed Houthis have moved to take control of
key government institutions by force.
Houthi militias are now reported to be moving towards strategic oil fields
and the Bab Al-Mandeb Straits.
According to some, the Houthis did not stage an armed invasion of Sanaa to
display their military muscle or realise limited demands. They intend to
fill the power vacuum that followed a popular uprising and ongoing conflicts
between Yemen's tribal groups that have pushed the country to the brink of
disintegration.
The Houthi advance signals not only a radical shift in the distribution of
power - as witnessed by the power-sharing agreement and its security annex -
but the creation of a new regional balance. Traditional forces, supported by
the Gulf and the US, have lost control to the Iranian-allied Houthis.
The crisis surrounding the premiership reflects the changes in the balance
of power. President Hadi Mansour had planned to appoint Ahmed Awad Bin
Mubarak, director of his office, as prime minister, but the political bureau
of the Houthi Ansar Allah group opposed it.
Ansar Allah denounced the appointment as an "external decision". It issued a
statement calling Bin Mubarak's promotion "a disparagement of the
sovereignty and independence of Yemen [which] breaches the consensus that
Yemenis have unanimously agreed should serve as the ruling principle during
the interim phase and in all matters concerning the management of the
affairs of the country."
It added that the leader of Ansar Allah, Abdul Malek Al-Houthi, would
deliver a speech to the Yemeni people calling on his supporters to stage
mass demonstrations, bring down the government and force the president to
retract his decision.
Ali Al-Bakhiti, a member of the Houthi group's political bureau, echoed the
same position on his Facebook page. His post read: "Any decision taken
without consensus will have no tangible impact on the ground."
He said that the decision to appoint Bin Mubarak as prime minister was "a
clear breach of the recently signed Peace and National Partnership Agreement
and proof that some parties are still attempting to impose de facto
realities, a policy that has plunged the country into so many tragedies and
wars."
Al-Bakhiti and other Houthi leaders insist the decision to appoint Bin
Mubarak was taken in accordance with "foreign dictates". The US Embassy, in
particular, is accused of dictating the choice of prime minister and forcing
the president to renege on his pledges.
THE HOUTHI VETO: Bin Mubarak's appointment was immediately withdrawn,
showing that the Houthis now possess, if not decision-making powers, then at
least an effective veto.
Bin Mubarak's withdrawn appointment was not the only outcome of the
challenge. Al-Qaeda in Yemen had undertaken military actions against Houthi
targets, but these were all outside of Sanaa. But when Houthi protestors
gathered in the capital's main square a bomb, allegedly planted by Al-Qaeda,
was detonated, killing 43 and wounding dozens of others.
Some analysts say that Al-Qaeda was not solely responsible for the
explosion. They suggest the involvement of other groups that feel threatened
by the convergence of opposing militias and grassroots protestors.
They say that traditional Yemeni forces and their allies, in their attempts
to roll back Houthi influence, have resorted to sectarian terrorist bombings
and are willing to turn a blind eye to the emergence if militant cells
affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) group.
THE SIEGE OF SANAA: Developments in Yemen following the Houthi siege of the
capital cannot be reduced to the simple binary of Shia militias versus Sunni
state, or the emergence of a Houthi state at a gateway to the Gulf.
Events cannot be reduced to an Iranian-backed conspiracy to partition Yemen
which somehow made the Houthi invasion of the capital as easy as passing a
knife through butter. There remains the crucial questions of how the Houthis
could pass through large stretches of Yemen observed, perhaps even welcomed,
by the Sunni majority, and how the command of the pro-regime Sunni army and
security forces has become so slack that orders were issued not to engage as
strategic site after strategic site fell to Houthi forces.
What the events in Sanaa underline is the crumbling of a state based on
tribal alliances and the fragmentation of the tribal/class alliances that
controlled wealth and power for nearly half a century under the leadership
of Al-Ahmar clan. This disintegration saw the decline of power-sharing
arrangements between the palace and the tribe.
Pithily expressed by the Yemeni saying "I'm his sheikh and he's my
president", the arrangement allowed for mutual backscratching by tribal
sheikhs and the presidency, and the spread of corruption and despotism that
eventually provoked the February 2011 popular uprising.
Most reports suggest that Yemenis have welcomed Houthi militia victories
over the Hashed tribe and, above all, the powerful Al-Ahmar clan. The
enormous influence wielded by the former tribal chief, Abdullah Bin Hussein
Al-Ahmar, was the product of a close bond forged between the Hashed tribe
and successive regimes in Sanaa since the declaration of the Yemeni republic
in 1962.
Al-Ahmar power was uninterrupted apart from a brief hiatus from 1975 to 1977
during which President Ibrahim Al-Hamdi managed to curb tribal influence
over the management of national affairs and to keep tribal elders at bay.
Sobered by the lessons instilled in this two-year break, tribal leaders
adopted a new approach: they refrained from direct conflict with the
government unless the government deprived them of what they considered their
dues.
Over time the interests of the two sides were indistinguishable. Many
members of the Hashed tribal confederation entered the military corps. It
takes only a cursory glance at lists of military commanders to realise how
close the relationship between this tribe and political power had grown.
One of the most concrete manifestations of the saying "I'm his sheikh and
he's my president" is to be found in the fact that many Hashed members who
enlisted in the Republican Guards became officers in the corps charged with
protecting the president.
PALACE CONFLICTS AND MASS DEMONSTRATIONS: There are reasons for the general
sense of welcome that citizens accorded Houthi successes, or at least the
neutrality with which they greeted the Houthi's arrival in Sanaa, but these
are insufficient to explain the degree of state disintegration the Houthi
invasion has thrown into relief. The term "paper tiger" does not even begin
to describe a government that waved the white flag without even daring to
bare its teeth or roar.
There is a backstory to the crumbling state that has repercussions on the
sectarian, regional and international conflicts in Yemen and is tied up with
Yemen's betrayed revolution.
Palace conflicts were a major factor in the disintegration of Yemen's
centres of power. They were triggered by former president Ali Abdullah
Saleh's plans to have his son Ahmed succeed him. General Ali Mohsen
Al-Ahmar, of Al-Ahmar tribe, rebelled against the succession project and
came out in support of the revolution, mobilising the First Armoured
Division and some members of the Republican Guards.
President Saleh would later accuse these parties of carrying out the bombing
of the presidential mosque in which he was wounded, leading to his trip to
Saudi Arabia for medical treatment.
Away from palace intrigues and conflicts, ordinary Yemeni's filled town and
city squares and demanded "the downfall of the regime". The revolution
deepened divisions in the palace and undermined longstanding political
arrangements between the Hashed tribe, members of Al-Ahmar clan and the
Yemeni Reform Party, the political wing of the Yemeni chapter of the Muslim
Brotherhood.
There was a desperate scramble to climb aboard the revolutionary bandwagon,
with key players conveniently forgetting they were partners in the regime
they now claimed to want to topple.
These were the forces that jumped at the Gulf initiative calling for Saleh
to step down in exchange for a safe exit and keeping the cornerstones of his
regime intact. The initiative safeguarded the ruling General People's
Congress (GPC) and guaranteed it a leading role in the national unity
government.
This led to the promotion of Saleh's vice president to president through
elections in which he was the only candidate. The Gulf initiative's sole
raison d'etre was to replicate a regime that repression had been unable to
save.
Saleh returned from Saudi Arabia in September following medical treatment.
In June he inaugurated the resumption of his activities with a bloodbath
reminiscent of the Friday of Dignity massacre in March 2011.
TOTAL ATTRITION: The ongoing conflict sapped the energies of the masses.
Yemen's ruling circles, caught between the blows delivered by the uprising
and from a resurgent secessionist movement in the south, also wearied of
their battles with each other. Al-Qaeda had also waded into the equation,
staging numerous terrorist attacks against military targets.
The Houthi invasion of Sanaa came against a backdrop of state disintegration
and popular frustration. The federal state had tried to undermine Houthi
demographic unity and restrict their access to oil-rich areas and to
seaports. Yemenis from the south were treated in a similar way, as ruling
elites tried to fragment the region and cleave off Hadramawt.
The federal project redrew the borders of regions to ensure Houthis were
restricted to Azal, which includes Sanaa and the Houthi bastions of Sa'dah,
Amran and Dhamar, closing the sea access they had previously enjoyed through
the governorate of Hajjah, which was attached to the Tahamah region. They
were also stripped of influence over the oil fields in Al-Jawf.
Mohamed Al-Bakhiti voiced the Houthi reaction to this arrangement: "We
reject [this partition] because it divides Yemen into poor and rich. The
proof is that this division brought Sa'dah together with Amran and Dhamar,
whereas Sa'dah is presumably closer, culturally, geographically and
socially, to Hajjah and Al-Jawf which are oil-rich areas with outlets on the
sea."
He added that the administrative divisions had been designed to ensure Saudi
Arabia has access to a large tribal/petroleum backyard. He made particular
mention of the oil-rich regions of Saba and Hadramawt, which share both
borders and tribal ties with Saudi Arabia.
POWER VACUUM: As happened in all Arab Spring countries, the best organised
forces crushed in to fill the vacuum created by the collapse of the centres
of power. How these forces did this varied from country to country, and was
often determined by the degree of cohesion of the military establishment.
In Yemen, the Houthis proved to be the force that was the best organised and
the least targeted by public anger. It was they, therefore, who succeeded in
filling the power vacuum and enjoyed the fruits of the betrayed revolution,
palace conflicts and the breakdown in tribal hegemony.
The Houthis received Iranian support but this is not what made their
victory, or paved their path. Foreign conspiracies do not work unless the
soil is already fertile.
The Houthis will try to build on their victory through establishing
partnerships that guarantee them a central position in government and
decision-making centres. Currently, they say they will build their military
forces so they become the kernel of a national army that will safeguard
Yemeni sovereignty and territory and confront Al-Qaeda.
But elements of the old regime and regional forces hostile to the emergence
of a Houthi state at a gateway to the Gulf will not cease their efforts to
undermine Houthi influence and limit Iran's reach, which now extends from
the Levant to Saudi Arabia's backyard.
In the absence of conventional forces capable of containing the threat,
Yemen faces the possibility of a clash between Houthis and Al-Qaeda, which
would could lead to a sectarian war.
Houthis in Sanaa
Followers of the Shia Houthi group watch a televised speech by Abdul Malik
Al-Houthi as they attend a ceremony marking Eid Al-Ghadir, a day the Shia
believe Prophet Mohamed nominated his cousin, Imam Ali, to be his successor
(photos: Reuters)
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